Hi! I'm Danielle, and I'm standing in for Mara this week.

When this show is on form, it's fantastic. Season Five has had some very strong episodes, but Joy is my favourite so far: snappy dialogue, an intriguing medical mystery, and skillful weaving of season-long story arcs.

This show always works best when it takes the patient of the week and makes a theme out of the condition, and I loved the way that this was reflected right through the whole episode, in the weird, abrupt cuts to close-ups of faces and the sparse music. We don't know for a long time whether the deadpan expression and flat demeanour of the patient and his daughter could be a symptom, a peculiarity of personality, or an artistic choice by the director, and the writers string us along really neatly.

Taub and Thirteen take an excellent dive into a COPS-style investigation of the patient, tracking him as he sleep-walks through a drug deal. It's a nice bit of respite to see Thirteen being street-wise without being self-destructive--she was so smart with the drug dealer, in hilarious contrast to Taub's terrible, fumbling purchase.

The medicine was more on track than it had been earlier in the season--no colonoscopies without anaesthesia, thank goodness. It's understandable when the writers stretch reality a little for the sake of drama--they choose an extremely rare but awesomely dramatic symptom like anhedonia, and choose not to give the character a fever, in a condition known as Mediterranean Fever. It works--the symptom that they chose is creepy to observe, and the trail of discovery that the ducklings follow is very plausible. It doesn't take much research to make a medical story make sense like this. I'm glad that the writers are bothering.

It's the same thing with Becca, the mother of the baby Cuddy is adopting, who is told that it's best to wait two weeks for her baby's lungs to develop, when two days of steroid treatment is more likely. But the point is made--Cuddy is placed in a very uncomfortable position; forced to weigh up the well-being of the child she wants to adopt against that of the woman who is carrying the child. It would have been so easy for her to lean on Becca a little, use her position of power to influence Becca to hold out for the baby's sake. But because she's Lisa Cuddy and even House recognises her as the ethical compass for PPTH, she respects Becca's decision to deliver early.

And it's heart-breaking to see that divide between birth mother and adoptive mother--when Becca is in theatre undergoing a caesarian, Cuddy stands away from her--there's such awkwardness between them, it's painful to watch. I think everyone could see that the adoption deal wasn't going to go through, but it was still horribly sad when Becca made the decision to keep Joy, because we know neither outcome is going to have a one hundred percent happy ending--it's sad that Becca was giving up her child for adoption, but she's also going to have a hard time raising her child alone.

At first, I thought that House's extreme over-reaction to Cuddy's announcement about the adoption was some kind of statement about his own parentage--that he believed children ought to be raised by their biological parents, maybe? His behaviour to Cuddy is belligerent and bullying, classic Gregory House in self-harming mode, acting out because he doesn't understand why he feels bad. He spends most of the episode telling Cuddy she's going to be a lousy mother, that she's not committed to the reality of raising a child, that she's going to harm the child. It's cruel and a bit disturbing (how did he get that baby to vomit into a cup, anyway?), but then he's always been the most horrible to Cuddy when she's feeling vulnerable. I guess it's the way he shows he cares.

So. The kiss. I buy it! I really buy it! House finally acts on the UST that has underpinned his relationship with Cuddy since the series started, and it works--they're both in turmoil, they're both flailing, and they do this stupid unprofessional thing, and it works for me. I have no idea what is going to happen next. Judging from the way that he walked out of Cuddy's house with a bewildered expression, I suspect that House has unplumbed depths of torments to inflict on someone for whom he has romantic feelings. But as a story-telling device, it's got me hooked and waiting for the next episode. Two weeks can't go fast enough for me.

(Mara's note: Huge thanks to Danielle for covering for me this week. I'll be back in two weeks when there aren't any pregnant women or babies at risk. Hits a little too close to home, y'see.)